Three years ago, Ars Technica discovered that when you "deleted" your photos, they were still kept on Facebook's servers, and anyone with a static URL could still access it. Three years later, Ars Technica revisited the matter and found little has changed. But Facebook says that things will be different...eventually.

Ars Technica's Jacqui Cheng got Facebook to comment on the matter, they're developing a new one which will permanently wipe photo off their servers within 45 days of a user "deleting" the photo from the site.

"The systems we used for photo storage a few years ago did not always delete images from content delivery networks in a reasonable period of time even though they were immediately removed from the site," Facebook spokesperson Frederic Wolens told Ars via e-mail.

Wolens explained that photos remaining online are stuck in a legacy system that was apparently never operating properly, but said the company is working on a new system that will delete the photos in a mere month and a half. For really real this time.

So if there's some incriminating piece of imagery on Facebook you're really dying to have removed once and for all, maybe all hope isn't lost entirely. [Ars Technica]